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Tabernacles, Berlin, Scheunenviertel , autumn 1933

Sukkah ( Hebrew סֻכָּה, plural סֻכּוֹת Sukkot ), German leaf hut , is the name in the Hebrew Bible for a hut made of branches, twigs, leaves, straw and the like , which is usually only used for a limited time. Religious Jews set up a sukkah annually for the seven-day Feast of Tabernacles , which is celebrated from the 15th to the 21st of Tishri , the seventh month of the Jewish calendar , in September or October, at the time of harvest. During this week, weather permitting, people eat in the sukkah , and sometimes stay the night.

history

Tabernacle, Italian manuscript, 1374

In the case of the Sukkot festival, which is initially only celebrated as a harvest festival in the Bible, as described in Deuteronomy , it is assumed that the shelters are the shade-giving shelters in the fields, as they are in the Middle East at the time of harvest can still be found today, where people probably also dined and celebrated. Only later, after the return of the Jews from Babylonian exile , did the festival become a historical festival, and living in huts during the festival was established as a reminder of the desert wandering after the exodus from Egypt , although the Israelites were not in huts, but lived in tents: “For the Feast of Tabernacles, which begins with a day of rest after the harvest has been brought in on the 15th day of the 7th month and ends with a day of rest a week later, you still have to note: You take the most beautiful fruits on the first day of the festival of your trees, palm branches and branches of deciduous trees and brook willows and then celebrate a festival of joy for seven days in honor of the Lord your God. Every year you should celebrate this festival in the 7th month; this order is forever, for all of your descendants. All the people of Israel across the land are required to live in huts for those seven days. Your descendants in all future generations should be reminded that I, the Lord, once let the people of Israel live in booths on the way from Egypt to their country. ”In addition, living in booths reminds of the transience of success and wealth and of human defenselessness without God's help.

Regulations and customs

Booths on a street in Jerusalem , 2005
Interior view of a leaf hut on a Berlin balcony, 2010

The construction of the tabernacle will begin immediately after the end of the Day of Atonement . The sukkah is only temporary, it must be in the open air and have a roof and at least three walls, but the third wall must only be a hand's breadth. The stars must be visible at night through the roof, which is made of plant material such as twigs, straw, reeds, leaves, etc. The walls can be made of any material, their heights are at least ~ 80 cm and at most ~ 9 m. The interior of the sukkah must be at least ~ 55 cm (7 tefachines, 1 tefach (ṭĕp̄aḥ) 9.28 or 7.84 cm) in length and width.

It is richly adorned inside, generally with the seven species ( schiw'at haminim ) with which the land of Israel is blessed, namely: wheat, barley, vine, fig, pomegranate, oil (= olives) and honey. There are also other fruits, colorful cloths, various decorations made of paper, verses that relate to the festival, pictures, especially those of the ushpisin and other things .

It is mandatory to eat something - at least the size of an olive - in the sukkah on the first evening of the festival. In bad weather you shouldn't stay in the sukkah, but there are very strictly religious Jews who even heat their sukkah so that they can live in it even in bad weather. According to the orthodox view, women are exempt from the requirement to live in the tabernacle, as are children and people who cannot sleep outside for health reasons.

According to a custom stemming from the kabbalistic doctrine , some Jews symbolically invite one of the most important figures of the Bible to their sukkah as a spiritual guest every day . These seven invisible "guests", the ushpisin (אֻשְׁפִּיזִין, Aramaic from Latin hospes ), are: Abraham , Isaac , Jacob , Joseph , Moses , Aaron and David . In Reform Judaism , female biblical figures, Ushpitsot (Hebrew, Aramaic Ushpitsan ) are also invited. At the same time, however, guests of flesh and blood must also be invited, and special attention should be paid to the lonely, the homeless and the poor who cannot build their own huts. The Jewish communities also usually create a community sukkah for those who do not have their own sukkah.

various

The glass courtyard of the Jewish Museum Berlin , built by the architect Daniel Libeskind , is often referred to as the “leaf hut”.

literature

Web links

Commons : Sukkah  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dtn 16 : 13-17  GNB
  2. ↑ Immanuel Benzinger , Morris Jastrow Jr .: Booth . Jewish Encyclopedia , 1901-1906 (English). Retrieved November 1, 2010
  3. ↑ Lev 23,33-43  GNB
  4. ↑ Joseph Jacobs, HG Friedmann: Feast of Tabernacles . Jewish Encyclopedia, 1901-1906 (English). Retrieved November 1, 2010
  5. ↑ Measures_and_weights in the Bible # Measures of length
  6. ↑ For details see z. B. Hadar Yehudah Margolin: The Sukkah Handbook , Targum Press, Southfield, Michigan 2005.
  7. ↑ Ushpizin . Article in: Encyclopaedia Judaica . Edited by Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. Volume 20, 2nd edition. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007, p. 432.
  8. ^ Paul Steinberg: Celebrating the Jewish Year: The Fall Holidays: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot . Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia 2007, pp. 129f. ISBN 082760842X Online (English)
  9. ↑ Ernst Kutch, Louis Jacobs, Abram Kanof: Sukkot . Article in: Encyclopaedia Judaica . Edited by Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. Volume 19, 2nd edition. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007, pp. 299-302.
  10. ^ Ulf Meyer: Jewish Museum Berlin. Daniel Libeskind's ultra-modern tabernacle Weltonline , September 25, 2007. Accessed : November 1, 2010